Women's spaces under attack. Not only the physical ones -clinics, sports, shelters, hospital wards, prisons- but including symbolic and political ones. If you do not also admit male persons, shut up and get lost.
Incredible and exemplary what is happening to UDI, Union of Women in Italy, an association that has been active for almost 80 years historically linked to the left. Many of the UDIs in Emilia-Romagna are at risk of imminent cancellation from RUNTS, the single national register of the Third Sector, simply because registration is only open to women. At risk of expulsion - from 21 October next - theUDI of Modena, of Carpi, of Ravenna, of Ferrara. Unless they amend the statute to also allow men to associate. Being removed from RUNTS would mean no longer being able to access calls for social promotion activities, nor the 5xmille for self-financing.
The measure refers to a legislative decree (117/2017) that imposes an open and non-discriminatory character on Third Sector associations. Significantly the Emilia Romagna region itself has interpreted the rule so slavishly and restrictively, stating that registration is only open to women "seems at odds with the open character that social promotion associations must have, especially in the case of an aps that carries out a wide range of activities in the general interest that may well benefit from the active participatory contribution also of male persons'. and pointing out that Article 35 para. 2 of Legislative Decree 117/2017 '.excludes from social promotion those associations that discriminate in any way in relation to the admission of members". Ergo: either open to men or close.
It is not strange that the issue arises in Emilia because the'Emilia is the most transfeminist region of all, where feminism must be for all. The vice-presidency of the transfeminist Elly Schleinnow secretary of the PD, has imprinted a decisive steering towards neutral. Since last October, the baton - not in terms of role, but in terms of content - has passed to the faithful Igor Taruffi, regional councillor for Welfare and prominent member of the Schleinian list Emilia Romagna Coraggiosa, which transfeministically defends uterus for rent, sex work and sexual assistance for the disabled. Continuity is guaranteed and therestrictive and anti-feminist interpretation of the 2017 regulation is perfectly in line.
Except that the UDIs in danger of expulsion started at the counterattack. Regione Emilia maintains that it has no direct responsibility and that it simply applied the rule, which it nevertheless other regions did not wish to interpret it in this way because they do not consider it discriminatory for women to join together to fight the discrimination they face, a formidable short-circuit that can only be explained by the precise desire to reduce women's political spaces.
The Minister for Equal Opportunities Eugenia Roccellatalking about "will to deny the recognition of sexual difference'.and inviting the Emilia Romagna region to stop. The last word will be that of the Minister of Labour Maria Elvira Calderone whose ministry the RUNTS registry depends on and to which the national UDI intends to address by placing a urgent interpretative question. However, it is not necessarily the case that all UDIs nationwide dislike this transfeminist opening to men.
If the principle asserted by the Region of Emilia were to pass, all feminist associations, whether already established or constituted, that intend to associate only women could be expelled or never be registered with RUNTS.
We have, after all, repeatedly seen how transactivism works on the level of language, skilfully interpreting pro domo propria terms and formulas conceived by women and for women.
Simone De Beauvoir's famous phrase, "One is not born a woman: one becomes one'. is regularly misinterpreted such as thebeing a woman available to anyone who perceives herself as such -gender self-identification or self-id-: it is clear to everyone that De Beauvoir did not mean this at all, unless one is totally in bad faith.
The famous slogan "the womb is mine and I manage it'. ('my body is me and belongs to no man') according to the queer reinterpretation would instead be the basis of the free self-empowerment of each* on their own body for financial gain, from 'sex work' to paid pregnancies.
Again, the total re-signification of the term 'gender'. Born to indicate the social and cultural construction -stereotypes included- from sexual materiality, Today, 'gender' has replaced the word sex altogether in most international documents and conventions, and is the key word in the transactivist lexicon. This is precisely why radical feminism has totally banished it from its language.
Even legislative decrees, as we are seeing, can be bent to the interests of those who wish to erase women, their difference and their symbolicThis is a fraudulent and exclusionary operation that could cost all women's associations dearly.
They cannot win.
Marina Terragni
